


Egregious

by TheNarator



Series: Honor Among Thieves [5]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Callous disregard for human life, Gen, Guilt, Multiple Deaths, People getting shot, cisco as a member of the snart gang, evil!cisco
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 04:20:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,745
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6269443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheNarator/pseuds/TheNarator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cisco pulls his first solo heist. Well, mostly solo. It goes about as well as could be expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Egregious

**Author's Note:**

> we’re going to pretend that iron heights is a little like arkham asylum: prison on the main floors, psych ward on the top floor, all the supervillain toys down in the basement.

He chose the Central City Museum mostly because he though Len would appreciate the irony. It was the first heist he ever pulled with the Cold Gun after all, Cisco’s creation that took him from a thief to a supervillain. As luck would have it, the very jewel that had gotten Len’s father thrown in prison for the first time happened to have recently returned to Central City from its tour of various museums around the country. The grand reopening of the exhibit was set for that afternoon, but until then it was under heavy security.

As Cisco wheeled the cello case down the sidewalk toward the museum, he couldn’t help but contemplate how strangely this emerald’s fate was tied with that of the Snart family.

He didn’t go directly up to the front door but rather stopped across the street, carefully setting down the case and pulling his goggles out of his pocket. He put them on first, knowing he wouldn’t have much time once he began, then opened the case and pulled out his gun. He called it the Omnitrix; not quite a watch full of aliens but a multifunctional masterpiece none the less. He’d chosen a cello case because it would allow him to carry the gun without disassembling it, in addition to the fact that it would attract less attention than an ordinary case. People gave him a few funny looks when he pulled it out, but none of them were willing to jump in just yet. Surely a sniper wouldn’t just take out his weapon on the street. It had to be something else.

Cisco took aim and fired at the door to the museum, not a bullet but a tiny beige bead that stuck in place. When the glass didn’t shatter the people around him continued to hesitate, but Cisco started judging the distances between cars. He only had a few seconds before he needed to cross the street.

3 . . . 2 . . . 1

The bead exploded, taking out three of the row of glass front doors. Every alarm in the building started shrieking at once, and Cisco hurriedly darted between cars, twiddling the dial on the side of his gun as he went. He thought that the hood slide he performed on the car in the farthest lane was reasonably graceful, and when he walked up to the door to square off against the group of guards that had gathered there he was feeling pretty cool.

One of the guards already had his gun out by the time Cisco reached them, but his hands were shaking. He looked young; likely he hadn’t seen anything like this before, only heard stories of the terrible supervillains that occasionally robbed places like this. Well, Cisco would give him something no one had ever seen before.

He took aim and fired at the guard, causing the him to return fire. His bullet, however, was absorbed harmlessly into the large pink bubble that had come from the Omnitrix’s barrel, it’s momentum canceled completely once inside. The bubble continued on, getting bigger as it went, until it collided with the guard, and he barely had time to look horrified before he too was absorbed. Thus sated, the bubble turned hard and fell to the floor with a heavy _thud_. It was hollow inside, wasn’t even airtight, so the man inside was perfectly fine. He just wouldn’t be able to get out until someone with a pickax came along.

Cisco repeated this process with the rest of the guards. Most of them tried to flee after seeing what his gun could do, so by the end he had a little trail of giant pink bubbles leading into the museum. He stepped between two of them and made his way farther inside, where people were running in all directions in a panic. Cisco wove carefully between them, most inclined to get out of his way when they saw then gun, and made for the stairs that led to the upper level, where the emerald would soon be on display.

Three guards were stationed around the emerald, the glass display case hidden under a velvet cloth. The heat sensors were off for the moment, so that the curator might grandly sweep off the cover to show the waiting guests without setting off the proximity alarm. After swiftly bubbling the guards Cisco stepped up to the case and, simply using the butt of his gun, broke the glass easily. Then he reached inside and picked up the emerald.

Cisco shifted the gun onto his back by the long shoulder strap and took a moment to examine it. But for its size the thing wasn’t really all that impressive. It sparkled but it was still pretty rough, the surface uncut and lopsided. He couldn’t see what was so important that Lewis had had to go to jail over it, but what he thought didn’t matter. It was what the police thought that counted.

The sudden lack of voices drew Cisco out of his contemplation. The museum was slowly emptying out, but he could hear no new voices coming closer. He looked around curiously, but no additional guards were approaching and there were no police anywhere. He walked to the balcony to look down at the front entrance, to find a glut of officers all stopped at the trail of bubbles, examining them and a few attempting to free the prisoners inside. One _genius_ actually tried firing his gun at one, and was promptly shouted out of the building by his superior officer.

Cisco went back to contemplating the emerald, seeing as it would take them some time to get up here at the rate they were going. Had this been Len’s heist they’d have been out by now, but because he was on his own Cisco could stand around leisurely inspecting his prize. There was a strange freedom in it, a more relaxed quality to the heist without Len and Mick barking at him to get a move on. To the degree that one could ever call stealing a diamond from a museum relaxing.

Eventually though, the cops made it upstairs.

“Freeze!” the first one to reach him commanded, gun out.

Cisco turned calmly to face him. “Yes?” he asked nonchalantly, as though they were two people on a Sunday stroll in the park.

“Put your hands where I can see them!” came the next order. To his credit, the cop’s voice wasn’t even shaking.

“Can I put my gun down first?” Cisco asked in mock anxiety.

This seemed to give the officer pause. “Sure,” he said, after a moment’s deliberation. “Drop your weapon.”

“It’s a little delicate,” Cisco told him, slowly bending down, “I can’t drop it, or it might go off.”

Now thoroughly confused, the cop waited for Cisco to carefully put down the Omnitrix and then straighten up, hands in the air.

“Cisco Ramon,” said the cop, tucking his gun away and pulling out his handcuffs as he came forward to grab Cisco’s wrist, “you’re under arrest.”

“Oh come on,” Cisco whined as his hands were cuffed behind him, “you could at least call me Psychotech. Aren’t cops supposed to use people’s preferred names now?”

“Alright then,” said the cop, shoving Cisco in the back, “ _Psychotech_ , you’re under arrest.”

***

A few of the detectives at the precinct gave Cisco various looks as he was brought in and booked. Some were pitying, some were horrified, some were angry and some were just confused. They didn’t know, didn’t realize, why he’d done this, why he’d turned on them like this. Why he’d suddenly decided to choose a different path than the one he’d been on.

Idiots.

He sat in an interrogation room for a while, knowing full well that there were at least a half dozen cops on the other side of the one-way glass. He amused himself by making faces in the reflective side, but their patience ran out long before his, and it didn’t take long before a detective he hadn’t seen before waltzed into the room with a thick file in his hands. Had Joe been here he’d have insisted on being the one interrogate Cisco, but Joe and Barry were out of town on Flash business in Keystone City. Thus, the new guy.

“So,” he said, tossing the file onto the table so that it made a loud noise when it landed, “you’re the Don Quixote kid, huh?”

“Cisco de la Mancha,” he confirmed. “Or at least that’s what they used to call me around here.”

“Used to,” the detective repeated solemnly, “when you _used to_ work here.”

“Yep,” Cisco replied, popping his _P_ exaggeratedly.

The detective shook his head. “What happened to you kid?” he asked, all sincerity. “You had a good thing going here. Everybody liked you. And now, what, you’re robbing museums? You’re not even running with Snart’s gang anymore; they’re all in Iron Heights. What’s got into you?”

“I don’t expect you to understand,” Cisco told him. This was where it would get difficult.

“Try me,” the detective insisted.

“You weren’t here,” Cisco explained, “there’s no way to tell you what happened.”

“What, somebody hurt you?” the detective guessed. “Somebody take advantage of you? One too many cracks about being a little brown kid trying to-”

“Actually you’re the first one to bring up my skin tone,” Cisco informed him sourly, “but thanks for reminding me that racists are another thing the police force has going for it. Really, sterling work environment.”

The detective closed his eyes and shook his head, clearly interpreting this as some kind of sarcastic remark rather than the legitimate grievance it was. Typical.

“Why’d you rob the museum,” he pressed wearily, as though a two minute conversation had already exhausted him. Clearly he was used to his blond hair, blue eyes and muscular build getting him out of most situations quickly. 

“Wasn’t my plan officer,” Cisco told him in mock innocence, “it was the voices.”

“Voices,” repeated the detective, deadpan with disbelief. “You wanna tell me you hear voices.”

“All the time,” Cisco confirmed, “in fact I’m hearing them right now. They say you’re a racist asshole.”

“You don’t hear voices!” the detective shouted, standing up and banging his fist on the table as he lost his temper. Clearly he hadn’t been chosen for his renowned interrogation skills; he’d been picked because he was the new guy. “You got no history of psych problems,” he went on angrily, “something happened, in this precinct, and I wanna know what it was!”

“You know what the funny thing is,” Cisco shot back, a little louder than he’d meant to, “you actually think it was just one thing. That there was some cataclysmic event that turned me to the dark side.”

The detective pulled physically away from him, and it was only at that point Cisco realized that his teeth were bared in a rictus of fury and barely suppressed rage. He’d frightened the detective. Good.

“You wanna know the truth?” he challenged.

New Guy could only nod.

“There was no catalyst,” he whispered theatrically. “There was no great betrayal, no one event that made me what I am now. Just a thousand little acts of treachery, tiny slights that add up into a single big picture: They. Hate. Me.”

“They don’t hate you,” the detective argued weakly. “Even now they don’t hate you, they all told me to go easy on you-”

“Oh please,” Cisco cut him off, “they feel guilty. They know they did this, and now they wanna act all benevolent by giving me another chance. I don’t have time for their guilt, or their pity. I ain’t telling you shit, so you may as well just send me to Iron Heights and get it over with.”

The detective stared at him for a moment, as if sizing him up, then stood and left the room.

***

“Pretty cut and dry if you ask me,” said Detective Smith. He was looking at the kid, Cisco Ramon, the former _darling_ of the Central City Police Department and current jewel thief, through the one-way glass of the interrogation room.

“It’s not cut and dry,” said Captain Singh, staring at Ramon with a painful expression, like watching his own kid go bad.

Smith sighed. Clearly Ramon was still the darling of the precinct, even after everything he’d done, but what he still couldn’t fathom was how the kid had perceived so many offenses where clearly none had existed. Not that anyone at the precinct would admit that; hell, they all seemed to share his belief that this was in fact all their fault.

“We did this,” the Captain went on, “we’re responsible. Put him in Psych.”

“But Captain,” Smith argued, “he just said he heard voices to mess with-”

“I _said_ ,” the Captain cut him off firmly, “he goes to Psych. That too to complicated for you Detective?”

Smith bit back the remark that rose in his throat and forced his face into a painful smile. “No sir,” he replied, “not at all.”

***

By lunch time Cisco found himself on the top floor of Iron Heights, the place in the prison where they kept the crazies. Rumor had it that psych was nicer. Rumor was wrong. The doors to all the rooms were still bars for goodness sake, and half the patients spent all hours making ungodly noises of pain or hysteria. James Jesse waved merrily as they passed his cell, and Cisco shot him a grin in return. Wasn’t his fault he was batty as a belfry after all.

Eventually they shoved him into a cell of his own: a cramped, claustrophobic affair with nothing but a bed and a dresser. Not that he had any clothes to put away, they’d taken his costume and gun and put them in the basement with all the rest of the toys they confiscated from supervillains. The first three floors were for ordinary prisoners, but they kept the mental patients in the attic, a psych ward for the criminally insane.

Eventually a burly nurse came by to give him a cup full of large white pills.

“What do these do?” he asked skeptically, holding the cup up to the light as though this might tell him something.

“They’re tranquilizers,” she explained flatly. “They’ll help you sleep.”

“It’s the middle of the day though,” Cisco protested, without any real force behind it.

“Take them,” she said, with an edge of steel to her voice, “they’ll help you sleep.”

Cisco shrugged, then dutifully popped the pills into his mouth and took a swig of water.

Once the nurse turned the corner, he spit them back out again.

It took some slight of hand to get the crushed-up pills into the guard’s coffee, but Len was a good teacher and Cisco managed it. Then it was a simple matter of reaching through the bars to grab the keys. He unlocked his door, then commandeered the sleeping guard’s gun and made his way back to toward the elevator.

He killed the burly nurse first; she seemed like the kind of lady who patients loathed to see, so he figured he might as well give them all something to smile about. Every guard on the floor came running to the sound of gunshots however, so he was forced to double back and nip into Trickster’s room until the hallway emptied out. Then the way forward was clear.

“Hey kid,” Jesse called from behind the bulletproof glass of his actual cell, “wanna get me out of here? I heard you’re a hell and a half, what’d ya say we have some fun?”

“Gotta ask my boss first, Trickster,” Cisco told him. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Jesse’s cackling followed him down the hallway as he made his escape.

He’d swiped the key card off the dead guard too, and that got the elevator to take him down to the basement. There was only one guard down there, and Cisco took him out quickly before he could alert anyone else, leaving Cisco alone in the basement of Iron Heights. It was essentially an enormous storage room, with rows upon rows of shelves containing the personal effects, weapons and files on every criminal that had ever passed through the prison.

Immediately Cisco began hunting through the stacks for some kind of organizational paradigm. It wasn’t alphabetical, so he deduced that it must be chronological, but it still took some doing to find where the beginning and end of the line had been arbitrarily placed. His own stuff was the newest, so he changed quickly back into his yellow V-neck and dark blue vest and reassembled the Omnitrix from the pieces they had disassembled it into. At least they hadn’t broken it.

Then, he went looking for the crate marked “Snart.”

Mick’s stuff was in there too, so he took the bag that his stuff had been in and tossed all three costumes inside. He put the Omnitrix on his back, dangled the gold and heat guns from his belt and slung the Ice Skates over his shoulder, then picked up the Cold Gun to hold out in front of himself as he made his way back upstairs.

He didn’t actually intend to seek out Lisa first, she just happened to be closest to the elevator, but when her cell door froze solid and then shattered to reveal Cisco and a dead guard he nearly dropped the Cold Gun as she threw herself into his arms and kissed him hard.

“I knew . . . you’d come,” she gasped out in between frantic kisses.

“For you . . . anything . . . baby,” Cisco agreed, then with great difficultly pulled away. “All that later though, first we’ve got to get out of here.”

Lisa kept eye contact with him practically the entire time she was changing into her Golden Glider costume, and she took her Gold Gun from him as soon as she had her skates on. They’d even confiscated some of her jewelry, so she left the cell decked out in full gear. Together the two of them made their way down the hall and around the corner, to where Len and Mick’s cells were directly opposite each other.

“Nicely done,” Len praised, not in the last surprised when they busted through the door of his cell.

“I learned from the best,” Cisco grinned, pulling out Len’s blue parka from the bag.

“Still,” Len argued, a smirk spreading over his face as he accepted the garment from Cisco, “good plan. I saw your bubbles on the news, knew you were coming.”

“Thought you’d appreciate that.”

“I did.”

While he changed Lisa and Cisco turned their attention to getting Mick out.

“Kid!” Mick said excitedly, catching Cisco up in his arms and hugging him tight.

“It’s good to see you too,” Cisco laughed as he was lifted clean off his feet by the larger man. “I’m surprised they didn’t send you upstairs.”

“Upstairs couldn’t hold me,” Mick assured him.

“Couldn’t hold me either,” Cisco informed him smugly.

Mick laughed.

He didn’t bother actually changing, just threw his fireman’s coat on over his beige prison clothes and traded a smacking kiss to Cisco’s forehead for his Heat Gun. With all four of them ready, they turned toward their escape.

“There’s a loading bay out back where the delivery trucks come in,” Len explained as he led them to the rear of the building. “We should be able to get a ride out of here, if we hurry.”

Even hurrying, however, they weren’t quick enough to evade the guards that had congregated outside in the loading bay. The prison had been put on alert since Cisco had escaped from Psych, and someone had figured out that the most likely point of exit would be the back where they could steal a vehicle. There were a dozen armed guards outside, all with guns drawn, and no sooner had the double doors opened than the whole crew had to shelter behind them from the rain of bullets directed at them.

In perfect synch Len and Mick popped out from behind the wall, heat and cold guns blazing. It took less than ten seconds for the sound of ordinary gunfire to stop, and less than thirty for the screaming to die down. Then Len stopped firing, pointing his gun into the air, and signaled for Lisa and Cisco to follow him.

They almost, _almost_ made it. They were all piling into a produce truck, Len and Mick upfront and Cisco in the back with Lisa. To Cisco it seemed inevitable that a lot of kissing and maybe a little more was in store for him. They were making their escape.

Then, as Cisco stood at the back of the truck to close the doors, one of the cops who’d been hit by the Heat Gun determinedly lifted his gun hand and emptied his clip into Cisco’s stomach.

“Cisco!” Lisa screeched, catching him by the back of the vest and pulling him inside the truck before he fell forward.

“What happened?” Len demanded from upfront.

“He’s been shot!” Lisa called back. She sat there, Cisco cradled in her arms, Gold Gun lying forgotten beside her as she held him.

There was a growl from Mick as he jumped back out of the truck, and after a moment he was striding toward the guard who’d shot Cisco. Without preamble he aimed his Heat Gun at the man’s face and fired, but the screams of pain clearly did nothing for his temper. He climbed into the back of the truck to sit opposite Lisa, then cupped Cisco’s face with one big hand.

“Stay with us kid,” he ordered.

Cisco was already going into shock though, so all he could do was nod weakly.

“Shut the door,” Len commanded, determined but with a note of real worry in his voice. “Mick stay with Cisco, Lisa get up here and work the GPS.”

“Where are we going?” she asked, climbing into the front with him.

“The nearest private hospital,” he told her, already pulling out. “Something small.”

“If we go to a hospital we’ll end up right back here,” Lisa protested. “We might as well just take him to the prison doctor.”

Len smirked, but there was a viciousness to it. “Not if we take the place over.”

“We’re going to hold up an emergency room?” Lisa asked skeptically.

"No,” Len corrected, “we’re gong to hold up a hospital.”

**Author's Note:**

> in case it wasn't clear, yes this takes place right before the events of "sanguine." this is how cisco got hurt. the series is officially over, but i may write another fic if i feel like writing coldvibe or goldvibe porn at some point in the future.


End file.
